Teacherjh wrote:


The one with security will have a bunch of unarmed passengers eating
squeeze food with plastic utensils, who are used to being told what to do
and when to
do it, and expect somebody else to dispense security for them. The
terrorist of course will be fully armed, because he (or she) knows how to
get stuff on an
airplane. Granted an unarmed angry mob is nothing to sneeze at, but if I
were the terrorist, this is still the plane I'd pick to be on.

There's another relevant point. If we assume that security would prevent
boarding with weapons (not a safe assumption at all, but let's go with it
for the moment), then what's a terrorist to do? Why, just identify and
overpower the lone armed officer on the aircraft.

Even an armed officer can be overpowered if it's done quickly and from close
range (and perhaps involving multiple attackers).

Thus, by putting weapons aboard, we're providing another attack vector for
terrorists.

Keeping the officer's identity secret is an obvious attempt to address this.
In the computing business, we call this "security through obscurity". It
doesn't work against any but the most casual of attackers.

- Andrew